Episode 6: Christmas Comes to Top Chef

Confession: I am a sucker for all things Christmas. I love the holiday, love the season, love the snow, love the decorations, love the cheesy music.

That said, the announcement of the Elimination Challenge on last night's Top Chef had me feeling a bit "Bah Humbug" about the show. While incredibly well-executed (complete with an appearance by the Harlem Gospel Choir), the 12 Days of Christmas theme seemed completely forced, even to a Christmas junkie like me.

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After drawing knives, each cheftestant was given a day of Christmas (from the song "12 Days of Christmas") to inspire an hors d'oeuvre for a Christmas-themed charity benefit. A few of the themes were pretty straightforward -- Radhika's "partridge in a pear tree," Ariane's, "six geese a-laying." More challenging were Hosea's "11 pipers piping," Stefan's "12 drummers drumming," and Jeff's "nine lords a-leaping." Ironically, the three of them ended up the judges' favorites, but Fabio (again) has my favorite quote of the show: "Again, I get a crappy theme. What am I supposed to do with nine ladies dancing?

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I remained skeptical of the theme until halfway through the show when the cheftestants entered the kitchen to find one of the refrigerators hadn't closed properly, and everything inside was ruined. Radhika's duck and Hosea's pork were too warm and had to be thrown away, with only an hour in the kitchen to prepare for the 250 guests they needed to serve. And now for the (dare I say) Christmas miracle portion of the show: all of the other chefs jumped in to help... and it was a success! As Christmas music played in the background, duck legs were substitued for duck breasts in Radhika's dish, Hosea miraculously found some more pork in the TC kitchen, and all was well with the world.

At the event, a benefit for AIDS charity amFar, guests were instructed to pin their red AIDS ribbons next to the name of their favorite dish. While the guests seemed reasonably pleased, if not impressed, the judges were not. Padma, Tom, and guest judge Natasha Richardson were all disappointed in the cheftestants' performance, and Tom made it clear that he wanted everyone -- not just the bottom three -- to understand that their cooking the past couple of weeks was unacceptable. After proclaiming Hosea the winner of the challenge (After we find out in the beginning of the episode that his father has been recently diagnosed with cancer), Tom enters the stew room, sits down, and announces it's time for them to step up their game. "Cook the food that got you here," he says. "We're looking for amazing food."